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News Analysis: No Easy Peace in Southern Philippines
The Philippine government and the rebel Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) ended their third round of peace talks in Malaysia last Saturday failing to iron out differences on rehabilitation and development of the strife-torn Mindanao island in the southern Philippines.
The two sides differed in their interpretations on how to use the money that would be allocated for rehabilitation and development projects for conflict-affected areas in Mindanao under an agreement they signed when they resumed formal peace talks in Tripoli, Libya, in June this year.
The government insisted that it should manage the projects funded by the government while the MILF, now the biggest rebel group in the country, said the projects should be managed by it, MILF chief negotiator Murad Ebrahim said at the end of the six-day peace talks.
No date has been set for the next round of peace talks.
Despite this, the two sides last Thursday managed to sign a manual containing detailed instructions on implementing a ceasefire covered in the Tripoli accord, including the creation of monitoring teams made up of both government and rebel representatives.
Both Murad and government chief negotiator Jesus Dureza hailed the signing of the manual, calling it a "step forward" and " another progress" in the peace talks although other aspects, including defining the ancestral domain of Muslim people, were not concluded.
Nothing can be more welcome than an end to the decades of Muslim insurgency in Mindanao that has hampered the development of the resources-rich but economically backward island, not to mention the 120,000 people killed and the more displaced.
The 12,500-strong MILF has been fighting since 1978 for an independent Islamic state in Mindanao, home to most of the five million Muslim minority in the predominantly Roman Catholic country of 76.5 million people.
But lasting peace won't land on Mindanao unless concrete measures are taken to tackle the various factors behind the Mindanao conflict, utmost of which is poverty and inequality, analysts said.
Mindanao has not only consistently shown the highest concentration of absolute and relative poverty as compared with the country's two other main regions, Luzon and the Visayas, said a recent study commissioned by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.
Within the island economy, it said, the largest proportion of the poor and the deepest levels of poverty are found in the provinces where there are a preponderance of Muslims and indigenous people.
These groups have "the least command of and access to physical, financial, social and political infrastructure facilities and services" within the Mindanao society, according to the study.
President Arroyo, who made a series of overtures to the MILF to resume peace talks that collapsed last year after her predecessor Joseph Estrada launched an all-out war against the group, is firm in bringing peace to Mindanao and making the island another "food basket" in the future.
Analysts said seeking an end to armed hostilities between the two sides is paramount, just as Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process Eduardo Ermita put it, "we have to silence the guns first before we can move on."
However, the guns continued to sputter despite the ceasefire covered in the June 22 Tripoli peace accord and the implementing guidelines of the ceasefire the two sides signed on August 7 during their second round of peace negotiations in Malaysia, with each side accusing the other of the violations.
Although last week's adoption of the manual offered another glimpse of hope, worries still exist whether the ceasefire can hold and avoid the same fate of a truce agreement signed by the government and the MILF in July 1997, which has remained on paper due to continued armed conflicts.
The persistent peace problem in Mindanao would discourage both local and foreign businessmen to pour their investments there, of which the financially-strapped government is in much need, analysts said.
The lack of investments, they said, translates into limited job opportunities that fuels further the problem of poverty, which in turn breeds social unrest in Mindanao as elsewhere.
The task of promoting development along with peace in Mindanao is arduous. If the root causes of the rebellion are not solved, more blood is expected to be spilled and peace will remain a far- off and luxury dream, some said.
And unless both sides strictly abide by the ceasefire and silence their guns, the foundations for Mindanao's rehabilitation and development can not be laid down.
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